DV : A New Way to WebDVD

A New Way to WebDVD

By: Ralph Labarge

I've developed titles with DVD-ROM and WebDVD features using a variety of tools and techniques. The DVD-ROM portions of Earthlight Special Edition and Coral Sea Dreaming have Windows screensavers that were developed as C++ programs. These programs work well, but they were expensive and time-consuming to develop and they don't work on some Windows DVD-ROM systems. Mars: The Red Planet and StarGaze include WebDVD features that use the Microsoft WebDVD API. This approach also works well, but is limited to users with Internet Explorer 5 and a DirectShow DVD decoder. Earthlight Special Edition and Mars: The Red Planet use Spinware PortaNet software to provide conditional access to locked content stored on the DVD disc, but the unlocking software is not supported on Mac, Windows NT, or Windows 2000 systems.

Earlier this year, I started work on a new DVD title called Planet Earth: Oceania. One of my goals was to include both DVD-ROM and WebDVD features that would work on as many playback systems as possible. After seeing an impressive demonstration from InterActual Technologies (http://www.interactual.com/), I decided to join its new Inventor Connection developer program. This program allows developers to incorporate DVD-ROM and WebDVD features into titles using the InterActual Player 2.0 software. This product builds on InterActual PC Friendly software and provides new features and a template-based development environment. The Inventor Program also provides a new license fee structure so the software can be used cost-effectively, even on short-run titles.

Figure 1 - The DVD-ROM and WebDVD application for Planet Earth: Oceania has four display areas. Widescreen video and playback controls are in the upper left. The upper right includes header graphics and buttons to jump directly to the 15 unique segments on the disc. The lower right diplays an HTML page with content synced to the video window. The lower left diplays a graphic that is also synced to the video window.

WebDVD templates

The first step in adding DVD-ROM and WebDVD features to the Planet Earth: Oceania title was to select the template I would use. There are over a dozen available templates, and I selected one that included four primary display areas. The template I chose included all of the basic HTML and JavaScripts required. All I had to do was to create the individual HTML pages and graphics to be synced with the video. Figure 1 shows the basic layout of the DVD-ROM application for Planet Earth: Oceania.

Planet Earth: Oceania has 159 different chapters. I couldn't fit everything into a One-Sequential-PGC Title because the maximum number of chapters in a Title is 99. There are 15 unique video segments in the program. Because I had to use more than one Title to fit everything, I decided to use one Video Title Set (VTS) for each unique video segment. This caused a minor problem with the implementation of the InterActual Player 2.0 application. The template I chose was designed for a major motion picture release. Hollywood titles typically have less than 99 chapters, and thus are authored as a One-Sequential-PGC Title. I worked with the technical support staff at InterActual, and we were able to modify the template so that it handled Planet Earth: Oceania's multiple VTS structure. The modified template will be added to the rapidly growing list of templates that can be downloaded from the Inventor Connection Web site.

Figure 2 - The WebDVD features of Planet Earth: Oceania allow the end user to click on hyperlinked buttons to view NASA Web pages related to the content being shown on-screen. In this example, an image taken by Space Shuttle mission STS-68 is being shown in the video window, and a second browser window has been opened to the NASA Web page for that mission.

Development

The development process for the application took about two weeks. During this time, I created 159 unique HTML pages and graphics that are displayed synchronously with the video content. With the help of James Cave, the graphic artist who created the menu graphics for Planet Earth: Oceania, we also created custom graphics for video playback buttons, Jump To segment buttons, and hyperlink buttons. We wanted to include as much content as possible on the disc so that end users would still be able to use the DVD-ROM features of the disc, even if they didn't have an active Internet connection. The DVD-ROM zone of the disc has over 1GB of data, including high-, medium-, and low-resolution versions of each NASA image used on the disc.

The WebDVD features, which require an active Internet connection, were incorporated directly into the synced HTML pages through the use of small hyperlink buttons embedded into each page. Clicking any of these buttons opens a new browser window that jumps to a NASA Web page related to the shown content in the video window. Figure 2 shows an example of the WebDVD operation of the disc.

Curve balls

One of the problems in developing a WebDVD title is how to handle third-party URLs. The WebDVD application for Planet Earth: Oceania has links to over 60 Web pages hosted on a number of different Web servers. In many cases, URLs for these pages could change after the release of the title. To handle this problem, the InterActual Player 2.0 software uses a technique called flexlinks. Instead of including a specific URL for each hyperlink, a flexlink is used to point to a Web server maintained by InterActual. The InterActual Web server redirects the request to the appropriate live URL on the Internet. If NASA updates its Web site and changes any URLs, updating the target URL on InterActual's server will repair the broken link.

Drive access times can cause another problem on DVD-ROM or WebDVD titles. On Planet Earth: Oceania, video content is played in one area of the display while HTML or graphics are displayed in other areas. As the video changes from one chapter to the next, the HTML and graphic content is automatically updated to maintain sync with the video. During testing, we found that some DVD-ROM drives were not fast enough to jump to where the HTML files were stored, read them, and then jump back to where the video was stored. So on some systems, the video would pause at chapter points as the drive tried to read data from another part of the disc.

By working with the support staff at InterActual, we corrected this by storing the HTML and graphics files on the local hard drive, which eliminates the need for the DVD-ROM drive to read data from more than one area of the disc at a time. InterActual plans on making this a standard feature of its setup program.

A strong recommendation

All things considered, my experience with InterActual Player 2.0 software and Inventor Connection program has been positive. I recommend that any developers who want to include DVD-ROM or WebDVD features on their next titles should take a look at this software. InterActual offers a free Guest Membership to the Inventor Connection Web site (http://inventor.interactual.com/interactual.com). As a guest member, you can download the software and explore the site prior to making a decision about using InterActual Player 2.0 software on a future title.

Ralph LaBarge is an award-winning DVD title developer and author of the book DVD Authoring and Production (CMP Books, 2001). LaBarge has completed over 200 DVD projects to date.